The state of employer-sponsored health-care coverage
"Strap yourself in; this isn't pretty."
So warns Brian Klepper by way of introducing a new report from the Economics Policy Institute called "A Decade of Decline: The Erosion of Employer-Provided Health Care in the United States and California, 1995-2006."
Among Klepper's observations from the report:
- The drop in the percentage of American workers with employer-sponsored health insurance between 2000 and 2006 was bigger than the gain between 1995 and 2000, even though both stretches encompassed times of relative economic prosperity.
- The drop may be fueled by growth in health care costs that, between 2000 and 2006, were four times the increase in workers' earnings and five times the general rate of inflation.
- The drop is hitting all workers: "The burden of these employer cuts is not carried by part-time or marginal workers. Rather, the most dramatic loss is among workers with the strongest connection to the labor force."
- The actual number of American uninsured is probably substantially larger than the commonly cited 48 million.
- The drop has economic implications because of the relationship between health, productivity and competitiveness.
- Even those with insurance have higher costs and lower benefits than in the recent past.
"The market can make care and coverage less expensive and more available," Klepper writes. "But getting to a system that assures appropriate care to everyone within our borders must be facilitated through policy. It will require political will, backed by a national understanding, already firmly in place within our largest corporations, that without secure access to health care, our people cannot be highly productive or continue to lead on the global stage" (emphasis added)
I don't often say, "Go read the whole thing," but: Go read the whole thing.